Teresa Drake, director of UF Law's Intimate Violence Assistance Clinic, was one of five recipients of the Alachua-Bradford County Women of Distinction last month. (Photo by Vincent Massaro)

By Brandon BreslowStudent Writer

Every day, Teresa Drake (JD 94) wakes up to face the world for the victims of domestic violence.

As director of UF Law’s Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Clinic (IPVAC), Drake is these victims’ lawyer, counselor, advocate and friend. For the law students who work with her on these cases, she is their teacher and role model.

“It is a labor of love,” Drake said. “I’m so passionate about the lives we touch.”

Her passion has not gone unnoticed.

In honor of Women’s History Month in March, Drake was named one of five recipients of the Alachua-Bradford County Women of Distinction award by Santa Fe College for her work in the field of domestic violence for more than 20 years.

“May you come to know her as so many in this community have and may you feel the depth of her legacy to the most vulnerable among us,” wrote Laura Knudson in her nomination letter for the award.

Knudson is trauma intervention and special services bureau chief at the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office.

“I was the only one surprised to find out I was getting the award,” Drake said. “My family found out about it when (Knudson) called my friends and colleagues for nomination letters to go with the application.”

More than 100 other women have received the award since 1987. Drake was honored at a luncheon on March 1.

“It was a great platform to promote awareness of domestic violence in our community,” she said.

Drake has been working on community awareness and assistance in her field since she began volunteering for Peaceful Paths Domestic Abuse Network while attending UF Law. She volunteered in an emergency shelter at night, helping battered women deal with the distress of leaving their abusers and the trauma inflicted by their relationships.

Drake was recently named Peaceful Path’s Community Advocate of the Year for 2010.

“I never ceased to be amazed at the strength I saw in victims,” Drake said.

Her volunteering led to an offer to work for the State Attorney’s Office in the 8th Judicial Circuit in 1996. During her 13 years as a prosecutor, she served as an assistant state attorney for child welfare legal services, the domestic violence unit and the county court.

For three years, she was division chief of the domestic violence unit where she prosecuted the largest, non-institutional felony child abuse case in the history of Florida, involving 25 children.

Drake also took on the added responsibility of training prosecutors and law students nationally on how to handle victims of domestic violence.

“It’s a special area and it needs to be treated as such,” Drake said.

She took her training and her passion to a new level in 2008, when she conceived an idea with UF Law Professor Nancy Dowd to create a civil clinic geared toward providing full legal services to victims of domestic violence.

“Whenever you’re dealing with victims in crisis,” Drake said, “they don’t just have one need. Domestic violence affects their kids, their housing and their finances.”

Following several months of grant writing with Dowd, director of the Center on Children & Families, the blueprints for the Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Clinic – the first of its kind in the nation – were laid out.

The clinic would utilize law students in helping domestic violence victims handle civil matters, such as injunctions for protection and dissolutions of marriage. Clients would also have access to a mental health counselor, a victim advocate and a clinical social worker.

In November 2009, word came in that the Department of Justice awarded them the grant necessary to make the clinic a reality. By January 2010, Drake had resigned from the State Attorney’s Office and was director of IPVAC.

Three active terms later, IPVAC has 22 students assisting clients with their most intimate legal and advocacy needs. They also go into the community and assist with screening for victims of domestic violence at emergency shelters and with the College of Medicine at Shands.

“Every term, I get this brand-new batch of law students and I get to watch them change tremendously and have their own breakthroughs,” Drake said.

Drake’s work with the State Attorney’s Office reaped one additional benefit. It was where she met her husband, Henry Stephen Pennypacker (JD 83). They married six years ago.

“We fell in love prosecuting child abuse,” Drake said. “We are both passionate about the protection of children and domestic violence victims.”

She has one daughter, Aaron, 22, who is a senior at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.

Drake also teaches yoga in Gainesville and cares for one dog, five cats and four chickens.

“The chickens are the only animals we have that earn their keep,” Drake said. “Every morning I wake up to free-range eggs.”

Drake also wakes up with weight of her work on her shoulders, but the heavy load has yet to discourage her from continuing her fight for her victims.

Renwick Nelson, Peace Corps Country Director for the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau, with Rachel Rogers, A Yap Peace Corps Volunteer, and four children from her host family at the Yap, Micronesia canoe festival in November 2010. The children's names from left to right are Tinan, Laatmol, Tiningded, and Limed. Rachel and the children are gesturing the shaka and peace sign indicating that they are hanging loose with contentment (everything is all right) and peace.

By Roberta O. RobertsStudent Writer

The Vietnam War era veteran and former missile engineer landed in the Federated States of Micronesia, an archipelago of about 607 islands 500 miles east of the Philippines, on Nov. 11, 2010.

It was the same date as Veterans Day in the United States – but this was no military adventure.

Renwick Nelson (JD 75) arrived in Micronesia to oversee the development of Peace Corps programs created to teach English to Micronesian and Palauan primary school students as the Peace Corps country director in Micronesia and Palau. He will serve for 19 months with the possibility of serving another term.

“I came here with three goals in mind: to positively impact those I came to serve and serve with, to be positively impacted by the people of Micronesia and Palau, and to make the experience a joyful one for me and my staff,” he said. “I tell people and I believe this to this day: this has been the most meaningful professional experience of my life.”

But what led a successful engineer, lawyer and businessman to retire in 1997 and dedicate his life to serving others worldwide?

“When I retired, I rode my bike, I played tennis, I played basketball, I worked out at the gym,” Nelson said. “After a while, that is not as satisfying as it may sound.”

His wife, Brenda Drew, wanted the couple to utilize their professional skills even after retirement, and Nelson’s friend helped them get involved in mission trips around the world.

He began as a Peace Corps volunteer more than 10 years ago and has a deep respect for Peace Corps, which he said “has been a significant contributor to peace in the world in the last 50 years.”

People who have been helped by Peace Corps share the same sentiment.

“I’m proud to be a part of a program that is respected by people on my island,” Naihila Peterson, a woman from Micronesia and Palau and financial consultant for Peace Corps Micronesia (FSM and Palau) said. “A lot of people can identify and connect with Peace Corps because they have either worked with a Peace Corps volunteer, hosted a Peace Corps volunteer or were taught by a Peace Corps volunteer.”

In fact, Peterson learned English from a Peace Corps volunteer while she was in high school.

She “made us stand up in front of class to give a speech on our essays,” Peterson said. “Pohnpeians like to laugh when other people make mistakes, especially when you give a speech in broken English. I just remember how she made me nervous every time because I did not want to be picked and to be criticized and laughed at. She is the one who taught me that we do not have to be embarrassed … all in all, be proud that you can speak and write in a language other than yours.”

Although some people may have never heard of Micronesia, Nelson was already familiar with the culture, which he said is similar to the culture of Tonga, a Pacific island where Nelson and his wife were Peace Corps volunteers from 2000 to 2002. Nelson taught business and law courses at the first tertiary school in Tonga licensed to grant New Zealand diplomas.

It was here that he saw international educational differences firsthand.

“Tonga students are taught never to question the professor,” he said, noting the contrast with the Western ideology that encourages discussion.

Nelson said he learned that if he had the students make presentations to the class while he took the role of a student in the audience, they felt free to question him. Then he would debrief them afterward.

Nelson called his teaching style a modification of the Socratic style, which is widely used in Western law schools.

“It is important to use (this method in Tonga) because this will be the method used in New Zealand and Australia, where they will go on to get their degrees.”

As a result of the couple’s volunteer work to expose the students to Socratic teaching, several Tonga students mastered the curriculum and went on to get their bachelor’s and advanced degrees from New Zealand and Australian schools.

“We were changed more by the experience than we contributed,” Nelson said.

Nelson has not only contributed to the people of Tonga, Micronesia and Palau, but he has also contributed to the welfare and safety of the American people.

Nelson served in the U.S. Air Force from 1964 to 1972, where he began as a computer programmer and was later chosen to enter the Airmen Education and Commissioning Program to attend school to become an engineer. He became an officer in 1968 and started working as a systems and weapons engineer. He was ultimately responsible for some elements of the Minuteman program, an intercontinental ballistic missile, Nelson said.

“I believe every experience in my life has changed me … The military enabled me to serve the country and also enabled me to enhance my own education so that I could have a more successful life for myself and do good for others,” he said.

The military paid for his engineering degree from Widener University, his MBA from the University of Utah and his law degree from UF Law through the Airmen Education and Commission Program and through Veteran’s educational benefits.

“It’s kind of like I won, the military won, the country won — everybody wins,” Nelson said.

And according to Nelson, he wasn’t the only one who was awarded the privilege to go to UF Law.

“I think when I attended Levin (College of Law) about 100 of us out of 300 students were veterans,” he said.

But Nelson also remembers a time when he did not have the financial resources to pay for even one degree.

“I joined the military really out of necessity,” he said. “When I was growing up I was poor, and I really couldn’t afford to go to college by myself. It was near the beginning of the Vietnam War and the military needed people and offered significant programs, specifically educational programs, for those who joined. And it seemed like I could serve my country and at the same time improve my own situation.”

Now he helps improve the situation of others worldwide.

“I appreciate his professionalism and his focus on the program, the volunteers and staff,” Peterson said. “He is a ‘no-nonsense’ person who has managed to stir up our staff to keep us on our toes. It’s exciting and I hope to learn from him in order to be better at what I do for this agency.”

Harvard Law Professor Joseph Singer, a nationally recognized expert in property law, discussed what William the Conqueror, the subprime crisis and the Tea Party have in common before a packed audience Tuesday in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center.

The fourth annual Wolf Family Lecture titled, “Property Law as the Infrastructure of Democracy,” explored how American property law has served as the foundation for democracy in the United States.

Singer pointed out one bright side of the subprime crisis: that it would never again be difficult to explain to students why you cannot package certain kinds of property rights. He also finds it odd that the subprime crisis spurred the Tea Party, which believes that having a large government is negative, because the government should have provided more oversight of the financial industry.

Singer discussed the contradiction between traditional principles of contract law and property law. “You can’t have absolute freedom of contract and full ownership rights,” he said.

The question we should ask ourselves, he said, is “what are the minimum standards for market and property relationships in a free and democratic society that treats each person with equal concern and respect?”

The Wolf Family Lecture in the American Law of Real Property was endowed by a gift from UF Law Professor Michael Allan Wolf and his wife, Betty. The Wolf family organized the lecture series for several reasons, Wolf said, one of which was to bring outstanding property law experts to UF to expose them to the “excellent student body and our outstanding set of colleagues.”

Singer’s lecture will be published in Powell on Real Property, the most referenced real property treatise in the country. Wolf is the general editor of the 17-volume treatise and was “so happy Joe joined us and convinced us that the restraints of law can set you free.”

From left, Deans Rachel Inman, Robert Jerry, William Page and Debra Staats addressed student questions at the March 30 Town Hall meeting. (Photo by Nicole Safker)

By Nicole Safker (2L)

The John Marshall Bar Association held a Town Hall meeting March 30 in the Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center to provide an open forum where students could address concerns related to all aspects of their experience at the UF Levin College of Law.

Dean Robert Jerry, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs William Page, Associate Dean for Administrative and Fiscal Affairs Debra Staats and Associate Dean of Students/Interim Dean for Career Development Rachel Inman, sat on the panel.

Dedicated Bar prep course
UF Law does not currently offer a dedicated Bar prep course, but the American Bar Association now allows schools to offer one tailored to the state exam that the majority of students will take. The college is willing to entertain the idea, but the administration believes that the private Bar prep courses that virtually all students take serve student needs. Dean Page noted the high correlation between grades and Bar passage rates and emphasized the need for students to study and do well in their classes.

Most Bar subjects already offered, more Bar-tested subjects available
Bar-tested courses that are already offered at UF Law include Florida Constitutional Law, Florida Civil Procedure, Florida Criminal Procedure, Federal Constitutional Law, Estates & Trusts, Business Entities, Property, Evidence, Torts, Advanced Torts, Medical Malpractice, Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure and Contracts. Contracts curriculum will expand beyond Sales to cover Articles 3 and 9 to compensate for the addition of that material to the Florida Bar Exam. The college will also add Remedies in Equity, which will be taught by Professor Justin Nast and will be available in the fall semester. Dean Page stressed that while students should take the Bar Exam into account when registering for classes, it should not be their primary focus.

U.S. News & World Report rankings
UF Law tied for 24th among public law schools and tied for 47th overall in the U.S. News & World Report rankings released last month. The UF Law Graduate Tax Program continues to rank first among publics and was second overall this year. The Environmental and Land Use Law Program rose to sixth among publics and 13th overall and dispute resolution ranked at seventh among publics and 19th overall. Prior to the rankings’ release, Dean Robert Jerry expected UF Law to rise as a result of the higher LSAT scores of the incoming class, better financials and better placement numbers. But the ranking methodology used by U.S. News changed significantly two days before rankings were released. Students in LL.M. programs are now considered “unemployed” for purposes of placement. Since UF Law has a significant number of JD students who go on to pursue their LL.M., this change hurt the law schools’ rank and resulted in the school remaining at roughly the same level as last year.

Professional Responsibility
UF Law is considering offering a more code-intensive and substantive Professional Responsibility course closer to the end of the second year, when most students take the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). The 1L course would then be replaced with a more general professionalism and ethics course and would drop to two credits.

Legal Research and Writing
Now that Legal Research and Writing is a graded subject, some students have expressed concerns that it would be inappropriate to receive grades for preliminary drafts since the primary purpose of those drafts is to serve as a learning experience. Looking ahead, the Strategic Planning Committee has considered making Legal Research and Writing a four-credit course and devoting the extra classroom time to advanced legal research techniques for 1Ls.

Mandatory grading mean
In response to student concerns about grade inflation, Dean Page is willing to revisit the issue of the placement of UF’s mandatory mean GPA of 3.25.

Martin H. Levin Advocacy Center
The second-floor construction is expected to be completed mid-July. The second floor will contain two new smaller court/classrooms, both with judge benches and one with jury box, as well as a collaborative space for teams to use while preparing for competitions. The second floor will also be the new home of the Legal Research and Writing Department, and the Environmental and Land Use Law Program will move into LRW’s previous space on the second floor of Bruton-Geer Hall.

Center for Career Development
A professional search firm, Spellman & Johnson, has been hired to find the next assistant dean for career development. That search is expected to be completed by June or July and the new assistant dean should be hired by the end of the summer. Dean Jerry stressed, however, that finding a high quality applicant will take precedence over any time constraints placed on the search. Career Development offices are moving to the ground floor of Holland Hall into the prior Student Organizations offices. This move will place Career Development “front and center” and should facilitate better employer relations and increased visibility. Student Affairs Dean Inman will continue to serve as interim until the new dean is in place.

Communications Office
In early summer, the Communications Team will move into prior Career Services space on the second floor of Bruton-Geer Hall to provide more workspace for the department.

New faculty offices
A suite of offices for new faculty will be built in the Communications Suite on the second floor of Holland Hall once communications personnel have moved to Bruton-Geer. This will be the final step of the relocations and will fulfill the ultimate goal of providing more faculty office space.

Bathrooms
In response to student inquiries about replacing bathroom faucets and water fountains, Dean Staats looked into it and the UF Physical Plant Division responded that these fixtures are replaced on an as-needed basis. The issue of the odor in ground-floor library bathrooms is the result of sewer-pipe construction. Physical Plant personnel is currently applying a chemical treatment to absorb odor and will increase application of that chemical if the odor continues.

Building exteriors
Pressure washing of brick and concrete on buildings and sidewalks has been postponed twice because of timing and weather issues, but will be taken care of over the summer.

Cafeteria
The cafeteria is getting a make-over, including new lighting, furniture, walls and floors. The new look will extend to the lounge area on other side of the wall where student organizations used to be. Carts containing microwaves will be available in the renovated space. In regards to additional power outlets in the table area, Dean Staats said the construction would be too cost-prohibitive.

Library
Library hours will be extended for spring exams a week earlier than last year, and will result in the library being open until 4 a.m. The issue of white noise emanating from the speakers in the quiet reading room was actually a HVAC system problem that has been resolved.

Food and drink on campus
The issue of having a hot food option for students on campus is still not resolved. The school purchased a “Turbo Oven,” which was not as successful as hoped, possibly because people don’t like the vegetables on their sandwiches to be heated. Dean Inman will work with vendors on main campus like Panda Express and Subway to possibly bring a limited menu for advance orders of food. Per student suggestion, Dean Inman will also consider bringing a set amount of a vendor’s most popular offerings to be made available a la carte.

Campus ATM
Wachovia has decided that there is not enough student traffic on the law school campus to merit the installation of an ATM machine.